Second to Cry Read online

  ‘Look, hon, she called you a farmyard animal. It really isn’t so bad. Kids in the city would be saying a lot worse at this age.’

  ‘Like what?’ Isla queried, unconvinced.

  ‘Like a see you next Tuesday,’ Aiden offered casually.

  ‘What?’ Isla’s eyes widened in shocked outrage. ‘You can’t be serious!’

  ‘Oh yeah, it could get really bad. Back in the city one guy told me that he found crack in his son’s bedroom. His son was eight.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ Isla gasped.

  ‘That’s why we are here,’ Aiden concluded. ‘So being called a cow isn’t so bad.’

  ‘Don’t say it!’ Isla whispered tersely.

  ‘It’s not a bad word,’ Aiden turned on his chair so he was facing his daughter who was now covered in her own dinner.

  ‘Meegs, what does a cow say?’

  ‘Moooo!’ Meegan instinctively replied, giggling and squelching her dinner between her hands.

  ‘See, she’s still our adorable little girl.’

  ‘Yes, but for how long?’ Isla sighed, still feeling the fresh splatter of spit which had been launched across her face.

  That night sleep didn’t come easy for Aiden. Beside him Isla had already drifted off, indicated by her slow and low breaths. He envied her. He longed for sleep, to release him from his mind which continued to run at a million miles per hour.

  He was trying to make sense of what Deena Fern had told him. She had lucked out because his connection to Brandy meant he would back away from the case. But it was only a matter of time before Samuel Fern called someone else in, the old man was, quite rightly, convinced Davis wasn’t his and Aiden doubted he would cease his enquiries until he got a response. The next law firm involved might be more ruthless than he was. It didn’t seem a question of if the story broke but when.

  By 3 a.m. Aiden had been tossing and turning for hours but was still no closer to getting some rest. Giving in, he rose out of bed, pulled on some pants and headed downstairs. The house had the eerie silence which all homes have in the middle of the night. You get a sense that all the world sleeps whilst you wander around. The impact of the silence made Aiden suddenly feel unbearably alone.

  He tried to shut these feelings out by turning on his iPad. He thought about checking the news but knew it wouldn’t clear his thoughts. There was something specific he wanted to see.

  Accessing a password protected file, marked as ‘work, important’, Aiden opened his private treasure trove of images of Brandy. They were all from media coverage of her life, from when she won her beauty pageant to the more scandalous stories regarding Brandon’s murder.

  Aiden had set up the file just after she left and rarely even opened it. It was there if he felt he just had to see but couldn’t risk an Internet search, the aggravation he’d get if Isla ever saw it in his search history wasn’t worth it. The files were his secret stash.

  He opened the image of Brandy when she won her beauty pageant and extended it with two swift glides across the screen so that it was as large as it could be.

  Brandy was beaming in the picture, a tiara upon her head and a sash covering her ball gown. Even though the image was in black and white she sparkled. With her head titled slightly to the right and a cascade of white blonde curls falling around her, she truly looked like an angel. Aiden felt something pinch in his heart at the thought of Brandon cheating on her.

  He imagined Brandy sat at home, waiting upon him to return when he’d been out treating Deena like a queen, making love to her, impregnating her, only to return home with anger for his wife and fists eager to pummel something. The sadness of the situation was almost too much to bear.

  Aiden thought briefly of Father West and how he now completely understood why he felt driven to do what he did. Not the part where he was willing to let Brandy assume responsibility, but the part where he flew into an angry rage and plunged a blade into Brandon’s body countless times.

  All the anger bubbling up inside Aiden was doing little for his need to get to sleep. If anything, it was only making him feel more awake, more energized.

  He looked back at the picture and tried to focus on her smile, how that smile could make all the bad things in the world just instantly melt away.

  His eyes grew heavy as they fixed upon her image and his head began to droop lower and lower until his chin met his chest and sleep finally took him, to a place where he and Brandy could be together. Where there was no illegitimate baby scandal threatening to break. There was only him and her and everything was perfect.

  *

  Brandy did her best to focus on her new life in Chicago. There was so much to see and explore. Everything felt new and wonderful. When Brandy wasn’t in college working towards her diploma or at Chez Vous, she’d wander the wide streets of the city visiting shops and restaurants.

  She particularly loved the river and loved spending rainy Sunday afternoons beneath an umbrella watching the raindrops bounce heavily into the water and the world slowly pass her by.

  But try as she might to heed her aunt’s advice of putting Avalon behind her, there was one aspect about the town which Brandy struggled to forget about; Aiden. Often she thought she saw him walking purposefully down the street in one of his smart suits and her heart rate would quicken. Then the man she was watching would turn around and her shoulders would drop with disappointment when she realized it wasn’t him. She needed something to help occupy her free time, something more substantial than sight-seeing.

  ‘I’m going to start taking piano lessons!’ Brandy brightly informed her aunt one morning as they both stood by the kettle in the salon’s small kitchen, waiting for it to boil.

  ‘Sounds good,’ Carol nodded.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to,’ Brandy continued excitedly as she placed two heaped spoonful’s of chocolate powder into her mug.

  ‘Urgh,’ Carol protested, scrunching up her over-made-up face. ‘I don’t know how you can drink that stuff so early in the day!’

  ‘I just love hot chocolate.’ Brandy shrugged lightly.

  ‘You’re a strange one,’ Carol smiled fondly. ‘I thought you might become all city slick living here but you’ve held on to your roots. It’s nice.’

  Brandy beamed at the compliment. She’d never had a positive maternal figure in her life before and it felt good to gain approval from her Aunt.

  ‘These piano lessons will be good for you,’ Carol added. ‘Might stop you drifting off all the time.’

  ‘Drifting off?’ Brandy frowned in confusion.

  ‘Yeah, you get that dreamy look come over those doe eyes of yours and then you sort of zone out for a bit.’

  ‘I do?’ Brandy blushed and felt mortified.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Carol laughed. ‘Everyone gets like that when they’re thinking about someone.’

  ‘I’m not thinking about anyone!’ Brandy insisted, the red of her cheeks deepening.

  ‘But men are trouble,’ the smile suddenly dropped from Carol’s lips and her expression became stern.

  ‘Whoever this man is who you daydream about, forget about him. Men are no good. I’d have thought you’d have learnt that by now.’

  The kettle boiled and Carol poured some of the steaming water into both of their mugs as Brandy stood silently, taken aback by her aunt’s comment.

  ‘You’ve just been through a lot,’ Carol backtracked, not having meant to hurt Brandy. ‘Men have messed you about, sweetheart. Take the piano lessons, work on you, and forget about that man who makes you have that twinkle in your eye. He can’t have cared too much about you else he’d have turned up here by now.’

  Brandy nodded and picked up her mug of hot chocolate and blew in it. She savoured the comforting aroma and let it flood her senses. Brandy couldn’t wait to drink it and inject some sweetness into her system. After all, she needed it to counteract all the sour elements of her past.

  *

  ‘Aid, can we talk?’ Isla asked her husband anxiously
after he’d finished his breakfast. Aiden groaned wearily as he ran a hand down his face. Meegan was still upstairs sleeping, still overcome by the previous day’s activities.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ he replied flippantly.

  ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ Isla began nervously as she opened a kitchen drawer and retrieved the note she’d carefully been storing. She handed it to Aiden and watched his expression as he scanned his eyes across it. He frowned slightly in annoyance and his jaw clenched.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked, looking up at her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Isla slowly lowered herself into the chair across from him. ‘It’s not the first one I got like that. I keep finding them in the mailbox.’

  ‘What did the others say?’

  ‘Leave and Avalon doesn’t need you.’ Isla recalled.

  Aiden looked back down at the note and sighed.

  ‘I’m sure it’s just someone messing with you,’ he concluded. ‘I’d just try and ignore it.’

  ‘Aid! How can I ignore it?’ Isla cried, instantly raising her voice. ‘Someone is threatening our family!’

  ‘It’s just a note,’ Aiden replied calmly. ‘I wouldn’t stress over it too much.’

  ‘How can you be so calm?’ Isla demanded, becoming agitated.

  Aiden pushed the note back towards his wife and looked deep into her eyes.

  ‘Because I reckon you might have written it,’ he told her simply.

  ‘What?’ Isla felt dirtied by his accusation. ‘You think I did this? That’s crazy!’

  ‘Is it?’ Aiden raised an eyebrow at her. ‘I know how desperate you are to leave Avalon. I wouldn’t put this kind of charade past you.’

  ‘I can’t believe you’d think that,’ Isla raised a hand to her mouth and noticed that it was shaking.

  Aiden pushed the note back towards his wife and got up from the table.

  Isla looked down at the note but could no longer make out the menacing text as her vision was blurred by tears.

  Chapter Six

  Leaving on a Jet Plane

  ‘If you can’t stop thinking about a woman, there’s only one way to get her out of your head.’ Aiden awoke; unnerved to the voice ringing in his head which was instantly familiar even though he’d not heard it in over a decade.

  The voice belonged to his high school friend Justin Thompson who’d died tragically in a motorcycle accident at eighteen. Aiden felt a pang of remorse when he realized it was the first time he’d thought of Justin in a number of years. There was a time when he thought of his deceased friend daily but the passing years had only put more distance between their friendship which would now forever remain in the realm of forsaken youth.

  Aiden could remember the advice Justin used to give. Amongst their group of friends he was the most experienced with women. He immediately had an advantage over the others in that he owned a motorcycle and even invested in a leather jacket to complete the look.

  Justin was a thrill-seeking daredevil but there was nothing which excited him more than women. He used to go through about a dozen girlfriends in a month, treating them like flavours, desperate to try all that was available to him.

  Aiden’s group of friends, of which there were four, would congregate at a local diner and put the world to rights. They were legally too young to drink but that wouldn’t stop them enjoying bottles of vodka in the back of one of their cars.

  They were always responsible, no one ever drove drunk. Except one time, when Justin insisted he’d be fine to ride his motorcycle home, even though it had been raining.

  Wincing at the memory, Aiden tried to brush it away. He’d spent too many sleepless nights reliving his final moments with Justin, wrestling with his decision that night to let him drive. He’d known he was drunk, his speech was slurred and his eyes were red, but Aiden’s own perception had been skewered by the clear fluid favoured by Russians. In his own drunken haze he’d agreed with Justin that he should drive, essentially waving him off to his own death.

  The friends never met again after that night. They went their own way and drifted into the world of adulthood and Aiden vowed to never again be so reckless with his judgement.

  ‘But seriously, I can’t stop thinking about her,’ John Rogers had moaned to his friends as they sat in Aiden’s rusted-up car. The scent of cigarettes and testosterone filled the air.

  ‘Then you know what you need to do,’ Justin had said knowingly. ‘You want to stop thinking about a woman, bang her. Works for me.’

  ‘That works?’ John asked, unsure.

  ‘Every time,’ Justin nodded confidently before taking a long drag on his cigarette.

  ‘John’s problem is that she won’t sleep with him,’ Aiden had teased.

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying!’ John had protested defensively, he was often the butt of jokes amongst the group, being the youngest.

  ‘Do you stare at her picture and wish you could kiss her?’ Justin mocked. ‘Or imagine what it would be like to hold her in your arms?’ he wrapped his arms around himself, causing the leather of his jacket to squeak and made kissing noises.

  ‘You’ve just never been in love!’ John said contritely.

  ‘Sure I have. And then I banged her,’ Justin had answered and smiled broadly, revealing his perfect teeth.

  ‘Aid, what do you think I should do?’ John had asked. Aiden was regarded as the smartest of the guys; he had the highest GPA and already knew that he wanted to go on to law school.

  ‘Bang her,’ Aiden had answered simply. His philosophy on women was pretty basic back then. If he liked a girl, he’d try to sleep with her; if she wasn’t up for that he’d move on to the next girl that turned his head. He never considered himself shallow, just young. You don’t consider people’s feelings when you’re young because you’ve yet to learn how a broken heart feels.

  ‘I don’t know,’ John had said uncertainly.

  ‘Well, if you don’t want to bang her, I will!’ Justin had offered, laughing.

  ‘You’re a douche!’ John answered, also laughing.

  They had continued to pass the bottle of vodka between them until there was nothing left but blurred vision and that frightening prospect of the vastness of the future which also seemed to creep up on them when inebriated, a painful reminder that at some point they’d need to stop getting drunk in the back of their cars and resume some semblance of an adult life.

  ‘Sometimes I think I’d rather die than grow old,’ Justin had once uttered whilst under the influence. His comment had been dismissed.

  *

  Awaking on his sofa, Aiden wondered what, exactly, had made him think of Justin Thompson and of the friends he’d become estranged from.

  Outside, the warm light of dawn was already flooding in through the windows, bathing the lounge in an ethereal orange glow.

  Stretching, Aiden cranked his neck and rolled his shoulders, his body stiffened from sleeping sat up. He got to his feet which sent his iPad scattering to the floor, it had previously been resting on his chest. Aiden picked it up and flicked it on, the image on the screen was of Brandy White smiling proudly after winning her beauty pageant. Aiden remembered looking at it before he fell asleep.

  He truly couldn’t stop thinking about her and he knew the advice his dead friend would give him. But he couldn’t bang her, he was married. Ever since Justin died, Aiden had been determined to never make a mistake and be reckless about another’s welfare again. There was something more to his feelings for Brandy, something deeper. He could almost hear the ghost of his friend laughing at him for being so soft.

  Aiden tried to shake off the shadows of his past and went upstairs for a shower, thinking briefly as he ascended that staircase that he should really give John Rogers a call and see how he’s doing.

  *

  ‘You look tired,’ Isla noted over breakfast.

  ‘Yeah, I am.’ Aiden admitted, suddenly feeling the weight of his fatigue hit against him like a brick wall.

&nb
sp; ‘The case keeping you up?’ his wife asked, concerned.

  ‘I guess so, yeah. It’s…more difficult than I expected it to be.’ He picked at his pancakes but had no appetite.

  Isla fed Meegan her breakfast, pretending that the spoon was a choo-choo train which demanded entrance to the tunnel that was her mouth. Pancakes at least meant that the toddler couldn’t get food everywhere. Porridge was quickly coming off the menu as each time it was served it would end up all over Meegan, even in her ears which always bemused Aiden when he had to clean her up.

  ‘Here comes the choo-choo train,’ Isla said, her voice light and song-like as she tried to coax her daughter to eat. Aiden was only half listening to him, his mind once more absorbed by Brandy.

  It almost pained him to see his own daughter, knowing that Brandy had been denied motherhood following a vicious attack from her husband. Surely it would devastate her to know that another baby had been born and raised, fathered by Brandon. Aiden sealed his eyes shut and tried to clear his mind, tired of fretting over the parentage of Davis Fern.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Isla asked as Meegan slapped at the spoon, not falling for the train routine, sending a piece of pancake flying across the room.

  ‘Huh?’ Aiden felt spaced out, struggling to focus on what was going on around him.

  Meegan began to giggle hysterically when she saw that her mother had failed to notice the flung piece of breakfast now lying on the floor.

  ‘Aid, you don’t seem yourself.’

  ‘I just need coffee,’ Aiden tried to excuse his behaviour, not wishing to discuss the real cause of his discontentment. ‘I didn’t sleep well, need to wake up, that’s all.’

  Isla nodded and resumed feeding Meegan whilst Aiden poured himself a coffee from the percolator.

  Driving to work, Aiden tried to shut out all external thoughts and just focus on the task at hand. That morning, driving into the office, everything seemed to remind him of Brandy. He passed the church where she would go to pray, the football field where her husband had become a hero. It was hard to live in Avalon and escape from her as her history was cemented there.